Back after a longish vacation, and went to log in using Dolphin to be greeted with the “You are using an unsupported version of Dolphin Viewer” message – the developer, Lance Corrimal, does update frequently and I had missed several week’s worth (or maybe a month’s worth) of small and large updates.
Went to the Dolphin site and noticed this, which I had been expecting given the recent announcements by Linden Labs (I’ve been able to stay current with LL and SL news via aetheric handheld while wandering around the Great Northwest).
I’m sorry Lance won’t be able to provide forked versions as Firestorm has said they’ll do; I like Dolphin (it still has a working Flickr upload button for snapshots). Gradually, I’ll end up using Firestorm OS and Firestorm SL more often than not (especially when they finally get their upload button fixed). Users who don’t need to access Open Sim will continue to use Dolphin, and happily. I will, too, for Second Life. I will miss some features I’d gotten used to while fooling with my standalone grid. However, the lack of an import/export feature was hampering, so I was headed in the direction of Phoenix or Imprudence anyway. I’m also thinking this is not necessarily a bad thing; Lance leaves a pathway open for anyone that might like to develop his viewer for Open Sim. And forked versions of Firestorm, as Inara Pey notes, means that the Open Sim version team can develop features and capabilities that are geared for the OS community.
One reason to continue using Dolphin – it’s got special features for machinimators, although for photography I still prefer Firestorm’s lighting/environmental floater.
I’ve installed the latest version of Dolphin (not a clean install, I don’t feel like messing with setting up my preferences yet again) which will still have OS support
I am writing to Dolphin users to advise that in the current development code for Second Life, Linden Lab has removed support for connecting to other grids. This is due to licensing restrictions imposed on Linden Lab for the use of Havok libraries (needed for pathfinding, mesh uploads etc).
This means that in order for future versions of Dolphin to access OpenSim, there would need to be a separate version with its own maintenance path.
Since Dolphin is a one-person project, I regrettably do not have the time to develop two parallel versions of the viewer for 3 operating systems.
So, please note that effective with the next release, the Dolphin Viewer will no longer have the list of OpenSim-based grids on the login screen, or the following commandline parameters –loginpage, –loginuri, and –helperuri.